


Falling Ash

by bossxtweed



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Destruction of Gallifrey (Doctor Who), Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:09:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25994242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bossxtweed/pseuds/bossxtweed
Summary: Dhawan!Master encounters the Ninth Doctor and they commiserate over the destruction of Gallifrey.
Relationships: Ninth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan), The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20
Collections: Thoschei Prompt Exchange 2020





	Falling Ash

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThoughtsCascade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThoughtsCascade/gifts).



Purple. For so long, it had functioned as a piece of his identity, providing comfort for the royal nature it represented, but now he felt  _ sick  _ at the very thought of it and so dressed in a simple, black suit.

The falling ash tasted bitter. It settled heavily on his clothes as he stood in what had once been Gallifrey’s capital and he spat before closing his mouth, deciding to wash it out with  _ ginger beer.  _

Exhausted, he set his TARDIS to ‘random,’ hoping all-the-while that it would take him somewhere  _ cooler  _ than this wasteland.

Elsewhere, a white man stumbled out of a blue police box, clad in a tattered suit, his blue eyes wide and staring out into the distance. Wretched cries, metallic screams, and the overwhelming scent of smoke raged in his memory. He took a step, then another, then collapsed, first to his knees, then face down onto the hard obsidian. Cool. He thought it funny, that; that the obsidian felt  _ cool  _ against his burning flesh while the surrounding air felt oppressively hot, causing him to break out in a feverish sweat.

He had wanted to go  _ anywhere  _ and yet  _ nowhere  _ at once. 

“Empty,” he whispered, placing one hand on the cool stone. “So  _ very  _ empty…”

It all felt like a dream. Like the end to some horrible nightmare. The Daleks were not going to stop and there was no reasoning with them, and so the Doctor had done the only thing he could: he put an end to it all.

He had stood in his TARDIS, watching on the monitor as his homeworld became dust and smoke. Were any of his old school mates still on-world? Were they now burning up with the citadel and the rivers and the mountains and those silver trees? What about his family? His  _ children?  _

Did they know what he had done? Would they approve, wherever they were---if they  _ were _ anywhere? With too much blood on his hands, the concept of an afterlife had never seemed too appealing, and he turned his head, smushing a cheek against the obsidian. 

_ Someone  _ was there with him.

A  _ Time Lord,  _ judging by the low tingling sensation in the back of his mind.

Not empty, then.

He pushed himself upright and turned to see a man standing there, clad in a black suit with brown skin and dark hair and the growing scruff of a beard on his chin. The man threw his head back, stuck out his tongue, and swallowed pieces of volcanic ash.

“You’ll get sick doin’ that, mate,” the Doctor spoke, in a voice he was not yet used to. 

The stranger stopped, shut his mouth, and turned towards the Doctor with his eyes narrowed. “Oh? Because I was thinking about getting  _ ice cream  _ and using the ash as  _ sprinkles,  _ along with  _ cherry syrup,  _ unless something  _ else _ tickles your fancy?”

Lifting his shoulders in a shrug, the Doctor turned his face away and wiped away a few loose tears. The ash, probably. It was beginning to burrow its way into his clothing, staining the already dirty fabric, and some of it was finding its way into his lungs.

The other Time Lord took slow, careful steps towards the Doctor and sat cross-legged beside him---close enough to  _ touch,  _ were he so inclined.

“Something on your mind?” the other asked, speaking in a rough dialect of their native tongue--the sort that children in the Academy had used whenever they wanted to  _ mock  _ the pompousness of their teachers and leaders. 

Quietly the Doctor admitted, “I’m so tired. I just want to lay down and wake up when the next Big Bang happens. Can’t I do that?”

Silence settled over them. The Master opened his mouth, let out a strangled noise, and shifted to psychic communication, gently nudging his way into the Doctor’s mind. “Theta,” the Master thought, shifting closer to the Doctor. “Tell me: where did you come from? And do you  _ plan  _ on keeping that rugged, burnt look? If so: I  _ like  _ it.”

“Koschei,” the Doctor replied, turning round again. “You escaped?”

“Depends on your definition of ‘escaped,’ Theta. Physically? Yes, I suppose you could call it such. Mentally?” He tilted his head, appearing to give it a decent amount of thought. “Have  _ you?” _

The Doctor shifted to sit cross-legged as well. “I… I don’t know. It’s too early, yet.” He looked up at the falling ash and for a moment thought himself still on Gallifrey, watching the world around him burn, and more tears tracked down his cheeks. Burning, burning, burning.

The Master’s voice cut into his thoughts, saying, “It all burns, in the end. Maybe… maybe, one day,  _ life _ will return to Gallifrey; some alien species will stumble upon it, colonize it, become what the Time Lords had once been, only they won’t have any Time Lords there to  _ explain it…  _ all of that  _ history,  _ that  _ culture,  _ gone like…” he snapped his fingers, shook his head, and grimaced.

“You didn’t do what I had to,” the Doctor said bitterly. “Don’t think you  _ could,  _ even if you had no other options---you’d rather let everyone live and  _ suffer  _ for it,” his tone was accusatory and he scooted backwards, putting distance between himself and his oldest enemy.

The Master frowned and stared down at the ground, leaned forward, and poked at a few stray insects, snorting as they ran away from him. “Right,” he said coldly, “only the  _ Doctor  _ is capable of  **_that_ ** level of destruction--everyone else is too  _ brave, _ or too  _ arrogant, _ or too  _ ignorant _ of what fulfills the common good, to do anything of the sort.”

“I don’t like your tone,” the Doctor retorted. “You  _ weren’t there--- _ ”

The Master pointed a finger at the Doctor’s face and snapped, _“no!_ I **_was_** there, Doctor! Fighting against the Daleks, just like you were, just like everyone else in the _bloody_ universe was! So _don’t--”_

The Doctor swatted at the Master with one arm and he rolled back onto the smooth obsidian where he lay agonizingly silent for several long moments before laughing, discordant notes that grated on the Doctor’s ears. He laughed and laughed and laughed until his bypass kicked in and he sat upright, smacked the Doctor’s arm, and breathlessly spoke, “we’re more alike than you realize, Doctor.”

Shaking his head, the Doctor replied, “no…  _ you  _ didn’t burn them all.”

“...I did,” the Master admitted in a whisper. “I, too, stood in the citadel and watched ash fall down; I, too, know what it feels like to be the very last of m-- _ our _ kind. You’re  _ not  _ alone, Doctor. You never have been, and you never will be.”

The Doctor’s eyes widened and he shifted backwards, shaking his head to block out the horrible truth. “No…”

Sadly, the Master turned his gaze skyward and opened his mouth, taking in more ash as it fell down, and the Doctor could only watch, his mind reeling. Gallifrey… destroyed, revived, and destroyed again, made desolate by two of its wretched children.


End file.
